Oracle Blog

Blog for barton808

Wednesday Aug 01, 2007

As I mentioned a few entries ago, the studio at Sun armed me with a Flash mic before I left for Portland. The idea was for me to try and conduct some guerrilla style interviews at Ubuntu Live and OSCON. I had no idea what I would come away with but Im quite psyched to say that in three days I taped 18 interviews.

I tried to capture a
representative sample of the Free and Open Source Software community,
or at least those folks who were actually willing to talk to me. I
got CEOs, pundits, a kernel developer, a package maintainer, foundation
folks, an actual user of Ubuntu on servers, someone from Microsoft and
even trotted out my rusty Japanese for an interview in Nihongo with
Horiguchi-san from Hitachi America and big a Ubuntu fan.

Topics: A conversation with Mark right after the first set of
keynotes on the first day of Ubuntu Live (a Sunday morning no less!) We
talk about the show, the new freedom flavor of Ubuntu (Gobuntu),
Benjamin Mako Hill's appointment to the FSF board, Mark's travels to the
east and what he's seeing there as well as his favorite food when he's
in China.

Topics: Daniel was a tremendous help when Sun was packaging
our apps for Ubuntu's Feisty Faun release. I chat with Daniel about
the process from a package maintainer's point of view as well as I
learn about MOTU's and how to become one. Daniel also lets us know
where he likes to hang out when he's home in Berlin.

Topics: How Redmonk got into the Free and Open source game
(both as their area of focus as well as what they use to run their
business on). We discuss Stephen's keynote "where Ubuntu can go next"
-- how the distro can build on the great success its had, move on
beyond apt-get and how the online desktop plays in; Mark Shuttleworth's
mark on the GNU/Linux world.

Topics: How the first 9 months of the job have been, whats a
community manager do and how does it feel to be stuck in the middle
between the Ubuntu community and Canonical. We also chat about the
history of LUG radio and why its more than
simply 4 loud Englishmen shouting and swearing. And finally, if ever
anyone finds themselves in Wolverhampton, what should one do for fun.

Be sure and tune in next time for the next six interviews from Ubuntu Live.

Endnote: The above files are in mp3 (thanks Patrick), you can grab the ogg versions here. I would also like to give an endorsement for the Levelator,
which Simon turned me on to. It was absolutely brain dead easy to use
and it basically normalizes volume, and cleans up the file for you. And
its Free as in Beer and Free as in Freedom.